Two authors fear world’s future grim
They say society must change ways
By James Bruggers
The Courier-Journal, Louisville, Kentucky
Two leading thinkers brought their visions of sustainable cities and farms to Louisville yesterday.
But first, architect Williams McDonough and author Wes Jackson offered a grim view of the future if people don’t change what they described as a destructive mindset.
“Soil in the long run is more important than oil.”
“The current forms of human designs … are full of tragedies,” said McDonough, author of “Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the Way We Make Things” and a consultant to corporations and governments. The result is global warming, pollution and the poisoning of people, McDonough told several hundred people at the Palace Theater.
“We have become strategically tragic as a species,” he said, adding that “any business” would recognize “this necessitates change.”
Jackson, a genetics scholar and president of the Kansas-based Land Institute, has written such books as “New Roots for Agriculture” and “Becoming Native to This Place.”
He said the “industrial agriculture” that’s dominated farming since the 1950s is rapidly depleting soil developed over millions of years.
He said soil should be considered a nonrenewable resource vital to human survival.
The two, who are known internationally for their work on solutions to environmental problems, opened a two-day forum marking the 75th anniversary of Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest in Bullitt County.
Talks and field trips continue this morning.
Yesterday’s opening session mixed architecture and farming with ecology, physics, economics and philosophy.
Kentucky farmer and poet Wendell Berry introduced Jackson, calling him a “useful” and “necessary man” presenting “radical solutions.”
Kentucky architect Lee Bagley said McDonough was, for many years, “a lone voice in the wilderness,” but has since earned awards for his work from Presidents Clinton and Bush.
Current farming practices and polluted runoff in the United States and around the world have led to many “dead zones” in oceans, including a New Jersey-sized site in the Gulf of Mexico beyond the mouth of the Mississippi River, Jackson said.
He argued for a dramatic change in farming practices that would replace single crops of annual plants with fields of mixed perennials, mimicking nature.
His institute is developing perennial versions of crops, such as wheat and sorghum — all with deep root systems that retain soil and nutrients.
“Soil in the long run is more important than oil,” he said.
Both speakers questioned conventional wisdom on subjects ranging from energy policy to military budgets.
At one point, McDonough showed a photograph of an aircraft carrier and said the United States’ operating principle appears to be: “If brute force isn’t working, you are not using enough of it.”
He called for a new collective goal for the world:
“A delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean water, clean air, clean soil and clean power — economically equitable, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed.”
And he questioned why products ranging from plastic children’s toys to television sets need to contain toxic chemicals. “Why are we selling hazardous waste?”
He also discussed his business ventures, which range from designing nontoxic and reusable carpeting to helping the Chinese government develop nonpolluting industry.
McDonough showed examples of buildings he’s worked on that produce more energy than they use, while recycling and purifying their wastewater.
His renovation of the Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge plant in Michigan, he said, features the worlds largest “living rooftop.” Covered with plants, it has become a bird sanctuary.
“Now we’ve got 300-pound autoworkers learning bird songs so they know what’s coming in.”
McDonough has been a consultant in the design of Bernheim’s new visitor center, scheduled to open next spring.
“This is a building designed to be like a forest,” he said.
McDonough said economic competition is good. Citing the example of competitive athletes training together to “get fit,” he said China and the United States should do the same.
The result could be, for example, a breakthrough in affordable solar energy collectors — something that would benefit both countries.
The central question, he said, is: “How do we love all the children of all species for all time?”
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
Posted by: noble on September 12, 2004 at 12:48:48